yeah egor and tom, I have to give him the benefit of the doubt. I just wish I knew more of the exact circumstances. I also didn't catch much of his interviews. We all know that people do freeze up in situations and/or sometimes don't act to save their own skin. I am not implying he did this, so sorry if it came across that way. Sometimes in life there isn't a happy ending no matter how much you wish for it.

I'll confess up front that I haven't read all of this thread. That said...

Sometimes it's worthwhile to step back and look at the problem to make sure that it's actually been defined properly.

Is the issue really the "shooting"? I submit that the issue is the "killing" and "wounding". By allowing the focus to be drawn away from the crime and put on the method/means of the crime we miss the real problem.

Could we make laws that would have prevented Loughner from buying a gun? Maybe, but would it have really been preferable for him to have rented a moving van and taken a 60mph run at the crowd instead of unloading a pistol into them? Would things be better if he had walked into the crowd with a backpack full of homemade pipebombs and set them off?

Obviously not.

So, the question is really: What law would have prevented Loughner from killing and wounding innocents in AZ? The answer is that short of pre-emptively locking up anyone who seems weird until he can be proven to be harmless there's no way to do it.

How do you prove someone is harmless? Ask any debater how easy it is to prove a negative. Simply put, you cannot.

Here's a scenario that shouldn't happen, but has...
person gets stopped with a wad of cash in their pocket. Cops seize it, claiming it is drug money. Person claims its not. Their answer? Prove it!

Now just how do you do that? Just because they cannot find any drugs on you isn't proof you are not dealing. Showing them your pay stub isn't proof, either. It is an explanation, but it isn't proof!

There are many situations where you could be accused of something, be innocent, and not be able to prove it. So, if you are accused of being a danger to yourself or others, how do you prove that you are not?

And this is the danger when we talk about making the "standards" lower for restraining people who are a little "off". Giving that power to any and every petty bureaucrat, or worse yet, to an anonymous tipster (who may have a grudge against you, doesn't like your politics, or just hates the way you part your hair) is just too much of a risk. The potential for abuse is just freakin' HUGE!!!

Ok, I can see an advantage to being able to have my local pain in the butt locked up for evaluation, but the down side of him being able to do that to me is not worth it.

__________________
All else being equal (and it almost never is) bigger bullets tend to work better.

This was a matter of concern for the above Gentlemen. It's called False Utility. Laws that are enacted for the "Black Swan" incidents rather than Utility. Beccaria (1738-1794) defined Utility as the capability of doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Jefferson quoted Beccaria in his Commonplace Book. As a matter of fact, it had to do with firearms control. The passage that Jefferson chose was "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
Australia succumbed to this after the shootings in Tasmania that stimulated their restrictive Firearms laws. You can pass a law that have prevented this. It would merely incarcerate every single human being in the Country in an individual cell isolating them from each other. To quote Chris Rock
"what about just plain crazy?"

Is it realistic to hope that when cooler heads begin to prevail again, and supposing that an actual gun control debate emerges from this tragedy...that this shooter becomes a poster-boy for some of the largest points that RKBA advocates have been trying to drive home for years?
And that it largely dilutes the gun control advocate's own long-standing positions? Surely at some point, a few have to seriously consider..."just what would have stopped this?"
And come to the conclusion that no law could have stopped it.

I don't mean for all gun control advocates...but for just enough.
Or is that wishful thinking?

__________________

Quote:

The uncomfortable question common to all who have had revolutionary changes imposed on them: are we now to accept what was done to us just because it was done?
Angelo Codevilla

Obviously bills are being readied from all the loudest advocates.
But what about the rest? If gun safety was legislative poison two weeks ago...does this event really change that, or make it even more so?
I don't want to talk politics, but would any important senator give up an A+ NRA rating(or others) over someone as random as this, when other mistakes were obviously made? I don't think so.

This guy is going to live long and large in the overall debate. Possibly more than anyone I can recall. Va Tech included. And he may prove to be the prototypical insane madman...that the entire debate has long centered on.

Which law could have prevented it? Probobly The Affordable Healthcare Act.

__________________

Quote:

The uncomfortable question common to all who have had revolutionary changes imposed on them: are we now to accept what was done to us just because it was done?
Angelo Codevilla

If a person has never been violent there is no reason to assume they will be violent today or next month. They may talk about violence, but it doesn't seem to increase the probability of them actually doing something very much at all.

I get paid to make predictions (job and career related ones) while working with individuals with disabilities.

Here's a recent example. A woman with a psychiatric disability pulled a box cutter on someone at a shelter 7 years ago. There is no background on the incident, that is all that is documented, she could have been attacked for all I know. She says it was a disagreement.

No one was injured at all. She has no arrests or criminal convictions of any kind and seems to be pretty much normal sitting in my office. Would you sign off on nurse's aide training?

If you are asking me...
I don't know what the psychiatric disability is. I have a niece with one, and it has no bearing on firearms. I weill equate it with dsylexia, altho that's not it exactly.
Also "no background". Maybe she was about to be raped. Maybe.

My point about the Healthcare(which I am totally against, in every possible way) is that under full integration(20 years down the road) this particular person would have been flagged. Treated possibly, or locked up possibly. Maybe.

Once an alcoholic, always...right? Raped as a child with bouts of depression?
No guns for you, eventually.
I don't like that slippery slope. I am ok with my liberties today robbing me of the chance of a projected utopia in the future.

__________________

Quote:

The uncomfortable question common to all who have had revolutionary changes imposed on them: are we now to accept what was done to us just because it was done?
Angelo Codevilla

Is the issue really the "shooting"? I submit that the issue is the "killing" and "wounding". By allowing the focus to be drawn away from the crime and put on the method/means of the crime we miss the real problem.

Could we make laws that would have prevented Loughner from buying a gun? Maybe, but would it have really been preferable for him to have rented a moving van and taken a 60mph run at the crowd instead of unloading a pistol into them? Would things be better if he had walked into the crowd with a backpack full of homemade pipebombs and set them off?

That's really it right there. The trick is getting politicians and their mouthpieces to stop harping on peripheral nonsense and focus on the truth.

I'd start by voting out anyone who proposes not just new anti-gun laws but particularly laws that ANY person with an 3rd grade education can recognize as pointless.

Rep. King's (D-NY) new proposal to make firearms illegal within 1000 feet of law makers....

Hello? Mr. King? If a person is homicidal and willing to kill and wound two dozen people.... will another law that makes possession of the gun a felony make any difference at all?

Voters need to send the ultimate "You sir, are a fool." message.

__________________
Still happily answering to the call-sign Peetza.
---
The problem, as you so eloquently put it, is choice.
-The Architect
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He is no fool who gives what he can not keep to gain what he can not lose.
-Jim Eliott, paraphrasing Philip Henry.

Like I used to tell people, back in the day: I can't make you obey the law, but I can make you wish you had!

__________________Violence is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and valorous feeling which believes that nothing is worth violence is much worse. Those who have nothing for which they are willing to fight; nothing they care about more than their own personal safety; are miserable creatures who have no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of those better than themselves. Gary L. Griffiths, Chief Instructor, Advanced Force Tactics, Inc. (Paraphrasing John Stuart Mill)

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